Employee conference - Remember the power of three!

Right let’s get cracking, don’t waste any time, at the earliest possible opportunity ensure you get a clear brief from your Chief Executive, Executive team or the most senior person possible. This is vitally important because the conference purpose should be linked to their business aims and objectives.

An enormous amount of time and money is often wasted by not agreeing shared objectives at the beginning of the organising process. Ask yourself and the senior team these three vital questions:

• Why are you holding a conference in the first place?

• What outcomes do you want to achieve?

• How are you going to achieve them?

Let’s take the why question first. Why are you even considering a staff conference, one of the most expensive, risky and high profile events?

Well let’s look at the positives; a well organised staff conference can help you:

• Motivate and inspire your staff team members
• Communicate important business messages
• Celebrate your successes
• Recognise and reward your people
• Improve understanding of business aims and objectives
• Bring everybody together as one big team and enhance pride in your organisation

It is not however a “cure for all evils” a chance to put everything right, or cram everything into one day that should have been done already throughout the year. E.g. a customer training programme, health and safety advice, or a particular manager’s current favourite subject. I have heard many people trying to just do too much on the day, keep things simple, agree your objectives and stick to them

Remember the important second question, what outcomes you want to achieve? These will vary of course depending on the culture of your business, company objectives and exactly why you are holding a conference.

I recommend that you try and stick with three outcomes; people are only able to take a certain amount of information in at any given time

• A happy, motivated and proud staff team
• A clear understanding of the vision and direction of the organisation
• A team of people committed to making the business vision a reality

Finally the last of the three questions and very possibly the most important, how are you going to achieve these outcomes and objectives?

Again this will depend on the culture of your business, “how you do things around here” the size of your organisation, your budget and what works for you. There are many ideas that i can share with you that are proven to help create a successful conference. But for the purpose of this blog it is vitally important that you understand where you are as a business e.g. a high performing organisation, a medium performing company looking to move from good too truly great or an organisation in need of inspiration and leadership.

The culture of your business and the place your Managers and workforce are at the time of the conference should not be underestimated. If possible gauge the mood and morale of your people and create a conference that is appropriate and properly fits your business culture. A motivational speaker can be the greatest thing since sliced bread for one organisation and a complete damp squib for another. Whether it is actors, drummers, films, comedians or a conference entirely run and presented by your own people I cannot emphasise enough how important it is to do what is right for your own organisation. This can be the difference between amazing success or demotivating failure.

30 second thought – Ensure you have a clear understanding of your business culture, people’s levels of commitment and motivation and business aims and objectives and remember happy people are more likely to be dedicated to the success of your business!